The sky was smeared with tasteful pastels, a subtle breeze marked summer's end, and the people were pleased. In this area, our four seasons were experienced in rather distinct ways. Winters nipped at us all, spring often meant rainfall and a polka-dotting of tornadoes, and summers were torrid. But that day, autumn was simply whipping a sunset across the horizon.

Leaves humbled the grass, and I was raking them into piles. I paused to watched a dog try to dig its way out under the fence, but its owner hollered a fair deal of nonsense and those dirty, dancing paws went hidden away. I continued raking for a while longer, and then as the cotton tufts overhead darkened out the sun and hanged with their silver lining, I felt a blister break at the joint skin of my thumb and forefinger. "God, damn it," I muttered to myself. However, He didn't respond to such requests, and so the feeling still remained.

As I walked through the remaining uncollected leaves toward the house, I heard my neighbor again barking at his dog and thought of my own. Raleigh was there when I opened the front door, leading me into the foyer, and her breath was warmer on my hands than the autumn air on my neck. Her feet, cloaked in their brown casings, held nails that clicked against the tile. Her tongue flopped out of her mouth and dribbled slobber onto the floor. Her nub of a tail wagged what it could.

"Want to go for a ride, Lee-Lee?" I asked. "Want to go bye-bye? Let me just go get a Band-Aid and we'll head right out."

Raleigh followed behind in my shadow on my way to the bathroom and sprang up on her hind legs, resting her front paws on the sink's lip. She had been acting more rambunctious as of late, but I always tried to tame it.

"Off," I commanded, sliding her paws down from the sink.

I pulled out a box of bandages and the brown bottle of rubbing alcohol from the medicine cabinet. Under the swab of peroxide, I felt my skin sizzle and tighten. I covered my blister. I knew sometime soon the Band-Aid would come off—being in the awkward spot it was—but I still applied the thing.

"Ready to go?" I pulled a ball cap over my curling hair. It had been about 10 years since the Redbirds won it all, but I would wear that thing 'til the navy dye faded away under a future August sun—or until they won it all again.

Raleigh hopped up into the passenger seat, and in doing so, knocked my bill back and the hat sat off-kilter on my head. "Cubs fan?" I suggested, readjusting my cap. "Alright, well we'll have to talk about that later"

We backed out down the driveway, looking out over a half-raked lawn of green and rust, as defined and unwavering as oil on water.

That morning had started late. Raleigh caressed my face with her nose and warm breath, as she did on many mornings, and demanded my attention. The sun had risen again and was just as much of a beacon, resting among the treetops, and we greeted each other through my bedroom window... and all was new every day but also just as it had ever been, and each recent day had been blending together, just as the leaves had lived to do so.

I raked them without any real intention other than having another day off and nowhere to go, nor nothing to do. And then I was driving with my dog, her head planted against the sill of a downed window, ears caroming along the side of her head. Momentarily taking my eyes off the road, I looked at the thin ring of untanned skin on my finger, curled with its counterparts around the steering wheel.

Thank all for Raleigh, though. Thank all the gods in the heavens in the skies above—thank you, Jesus, because that dog had pulled me along through every day, inch by inch, since Charlie had left. Many are known to have said "through hell or high water," and I was up to my knees. On my best say, I couldn't get out of bed. On my worst days, I couldn't even breathe. But there she'd be, Raleigh, with a pure heart, giving me breath. And even on those better days when I'd lie awake—sometimes not noticing the day had become the night—when I hadn't realized the two streams coalesced—I would draw myself from sleep, and she would be there. That black beauty, whose big white smile often emerged from the chocolate of her jaw line, was four years and ninety pounds of requited love.

There she and I sat one warm evening. We were slightly speeding along, occupying the front seats of my Jeep, with the windows fully at rest on either side, taking in the cooling air of autumn. The crest of the trees we passed by mixed with the distant light of the sun, which sent a blaze out over the sky.

Raleigh, ever the excitable wanderer, drew in that blaze and watched as the world came and quickly went. Sometimes crafty in her ways, and often untamed in her curiosity, she was still an animal—and if any aspects of her personality were unfortunate, it was that one.

Before exiting onto the highway, we passed a man walking along the road. Raleigh propped herself up with her paws on the open window and let loose a playful bark. I was forced to pull her back by her nylon collar, for the settling of my own fears.

When that day began, Raleigh was breathing on me, for me. But by the time the day ended, that would no longer be the case. Because while we curved the exit to the highway and began accelerating into the next lane, a deer came up over the hill beside the shoulder. And as Raleigh leapt from her seat at my side, I knew. And if I could have taken in that last morning with her in any greater way, I would have. I would have gathered her calm in my hands and planted that tranquility in my soul.

Though, with the road still in front of me then, and in less than a moment, there was no longer a way for me to touch any living part of her—I couldn't even scream, or speak her name, or measure out a goodbye—for I knew just as my lungs very well knew, my breath was gone.

And with feet light against the cigarette butts and varied litter on the shoulder just outside my car's door, I was overcome by some dreamlike floating sensation, and I prayed I really was dreaming. I prayed like I had just been shown how: low and whimpering but high and mighty, knees to the crest of that roadside hill. Though, there was no faith to be found on the highway. My hands clenched my thighs and my eyes were wide when I saw her along the lowest point of the shoulder. She was completely still. I folded further.

I could have died there in the grass, and I could have jumped out of my existence and into Forever with Raleigh. I could have given my skin to the knoll, my muscles to the Mother Earth, my bones to the trees.

Instead, I picked myself up and trudged toward her. Those few minutes I gave to my lying there with that dark angel—they felt like days, and I hoped those long minutes felt like many days to her, too. I hoped she knew I was there with her, that I loved her, that she meant so incredibly much to me. I hoped she knew I never wanted to leave. I hoped she knew I could have remained.

With my head against her loose skin, resting fur against my neck, I could have remained. I would have waited to meet her wherever we were going. And sometimes, I wish I had.

Those who saw my dog swiftly remove her life from mine, they stood at the top of the hill beside their parked cars, hazard lights blinking. Their palms were held against their gaping mouths. I howled at them, "What happened?" No one answered, not that I needed them to. They couldn't have told me anything I didn't already know.

They couldn't help but watch as I carried Raleigh's limp body back up the hill. "Can one of you please open the back?" An older woman, one with the most obvious of kind hearts, drew herself out from the silent crowd and offered her shaking hand. Despite having asked for the back hatch to be opened, I found great pain in resting Raleigh there. But there she was, finished, with my bandage stuck to her fur, having peeled off from my hand along the way.

"Everything is okay," whispered the woman, her hand on my arm.

"No," I said, the fear of tomorrow growing, "everything is not okay. She's dead. She jumped out, and now she's dead. Everything is not okay."

"But everything will be."

I ignored the woman, even when her smooth fingers clutched by barren, blistered palm.

"Raleigh, you stupid—you animal. You used to be so good. Now look at you." I collapsed over her body and clutched her fur in my hands, sobbing.

"But that's not fair," said a man standing by.

With broken speech, I demanded he not tell me what fair was. "My dog's dead." I tried collecting myself. "Please just leave me alone. Please go."

I shut the hatch, walked around to my side of the car, and slammed the door without purpose. The sound reverberated through my mind, and the echoing forced itself out through my fists, pounding on equal parts steering wheel and dashboard.

Without my blinker on, I pulled off of the shoulder and, through my rearview mirror, saw the small crowd remain, unable to slip back into their vehicles or into their lives at all. Though, as I found the number in my contacts and called, I questioned how their days could carry on in any direction.

"Hi, this is Remy Lang," I told the clinic receptionist, spelling my last name. I heard her begin to type on the other end. "My Rottweiler, Raleigh—yes, her. Well, she passed away today—yes, it is awful.—Thank you."

I didn't know what to say next. After a pause, the woman on the phone asked if I wanted to bring her there or if she should call a service to come pick Raleigh up.

"She jumped out of my car window when we were getting on the highway." The receptionist audibly gasped, making me realize I hadn't answered her question at all. "I'm sorry I said that. Raleigh's already with me. I'll bring her there." I ended the call.

As I drove, I couldn't help but look up at the nearly hidden sun rather than the road. I tried remembering the same sun that had been there when I was thrown awake that morning and many mornings before. I tried remembering its position in the sky, the way the light came through the window in my room, how it warmed Raleigh's blanket of black fur. I tried remembering her eyes and her calm and her breath. And just as I wished I could have painted that morning and capture the sun dangling there, I also wanted to cut free the daily beacon from the gallows of its clouds. My faith was shattered, and all my surroundings, punctured by its fragments. And there I was, suspended, too.

But then I found myself falling inward and remembered when innocence was blissful—what great pleasure I had in not knowing.

Looking at the lighter loop of skin around my ring finger, glancing over at the empty seat to my right, noticing the horrified gathering getting smaller behind me, I questioned everything. What had I done wrong? Where had my peace gone? Where was my calm?

I remembered. That was the day. When I was enjoying the comfort of Raleigh and when I was no longer. When my possessions became the opposite. When I lost faith.

I remember when God left me.